Brodsky noted that the department is trying to beef up the department in the face of rising violence by hiring hundreds of officers over the next two years.
"Here we have a fully trained officer who could be patrolling and protecting people … and they're putting him behind a desk for no reason other than he won't toe the line," he said.
Lawyers for the LeGrier and Jones families also voiced skepticism that Rialmo's return to street duties was simply an administrative error at the district. The shooting drew wide attention, and the lawyers said they would have expected Rialmo's redeployment to gain broader notice within the department.
Putting Rialmo back on the street while his shooting was still under investigation was an insult to the victims' families, said Larry Rogers Jr., a lawyer for Jones' family. The episode "shows the level of dysfunction that's occurring in the department," he said.
The revelation comes as Mayor Rahm Emanuel continues to work on an overhaul of policing spurred by the release nearly a year ago of the video of white Officer Jason Van Dyke fatally shooting McDonald, a black teen. Van Dyke is awaiting trial on first-degree murder charges.
With the Justice Department investigation still underway, Emanuel has announced changes designed to get in front of reforms that federal authorities could seek to enforce. Two of City Hall's focuses have been on changing use-of-force policies to limit controversial shootings and revamping a disciplinary system that has long been slow, disorganized and prone to clearing officers, even when evidence indicated wrongdoing.
A recent Tribune investigation showed that one consequence of the city's halting approach to discipline is that some Chicago police on desk duty have been sidelined for years or even a decade as they wait on disciplinary proceedings. About 75 officers are now on desk duty, creating a financial and manpower burden for a department strapped for cash and looking to add more police.
Rialmo responded about 4:30 a.m. Dec. 26 to LeGrier's father's home in the West Garfield Park neighborhood after calls about a fight between the teen and his father. According to the initial account Rialmo gave detectives, Jones, a neighbor, answered the door and pointed officers to the upstairs apartment. As Jones turned to walk back to her unit, LeGrier, a Northern Illinois University student who had behaved erratically for months, emerged from a doorway and waved a bat over his head, Rialmo reported.
Rialmo said he backed down the front porch stairs and drew his gun while ordering LeGrier to drop the bat. He opened fire, shooting LeGrier six times and Jones once in the chest.
When Rialmo was re-interviewed days after the shooting, he added further details. Though he'd first said LeGrier only raised the bat, he said in the later interview that the 19-year-old twice tried to hit him with it, records show.
But lawyers for the survivors of LeGrier and Jones allege that Rialmo was far from LeGrier and in no immediate danger when he fired.
Rialmo, now 27, filed the unusual countersuit in June against the victims' families, accusing LeGrier of forcing him to shoot the two dead by waving the bat at him.
Rialmo also sued the city, claiming he shot the two in part because he was inadequately trained in handling people with mental health issues. Emanuel, indeed, has recently sought to give officers more training on defusing violent situations and handling the mentally ill.
Experts say Rialmo's countersuit would put him and the city in a difficult position if he were sued again. But that doesn't appear to have happened thus far.
"It's no harm, no foul, but if you have a foul, then you've got a problem," said James Kearns, an Urbana attorney who teaches pretrial litigation at the University of Illinois College of Law.
The policy of keeping officers off the street after shootings is new to Chicago, and Foutris, the LeGrier family lawyer, said Rialmo's redeployment shows that reality in the department still lags behind rhetoric and policy.
"They say something's gonna change ..." he said. "Then nothing changes."
